Kings Fund Publishes NHS Leadership & Management Report

The King’s Fund set up a commission on leadership and management in the NHS with a brief to:

• take a view on the current state of management and leadership in the NHS
• establish the nature of management and leadership that will be required to meet the quality and financial challenges now facing the health care system
• recommend what needs to be done to strengthen and develop management and leadership in the NHS.

The Commission has found that high-quality, stable management to be key to high-performing health services - no surprise I hear you cry! 

Taken from an except of NHS Innovation and Improvement the report says 'across the NHS, the average chief executive spends just 700 days in post. In part, this reflects a culture where ‘heroic’ leaders grapple with problems only from the top of the organisation, or are ‘parachuted in’ to replace individual managers and ‘turn around’ troubled NHS services. The report advocates a new type of ‘shared leadership’ involving leaders at different levels of the workforce working collaboratively with all those involved in patient care to lead change and improve services, rather than only tackling problems inside specific institutions.'

This brings me to one of my favorite quotes (thanks Chris) from Bob Nelson, head of Corporate Management Development, BBC who said, " Some leaders are at the top of their organisations, although the behaviours of leadership can be exercised at any level.  Where ever we are in an organisation, most of us are leaders, subordinates and colleagues.  Resent research has also found paradoxically, that there is more freedom to act at lower levels in organisations than at higher, where constraints and other influences can be more complex.  The knowledge and skills necessary to make organisations work are decentralised - so power is decentralised and leadership is needed at all levels.  An organisation that permits people to manifest and develop these kinds of power without regard to their official status is nurturing leadership."

It's quite disturbing that even now it appears it needs to be pointed out that there is talent throughout our organisations and more than ever we need to tap into it and give people the responsibility and recognition that they deserve.

Kate Peacock

For the full report http://www.kingsfund.org.uk/publications/nhs_leadership.html